Wendy Northcross wanted to add her voice to those of fellow Cape Cod Community College trustees who wanted Kathy Schatzberg to stay on as the school’s president, but she was too late.

Not too late, as it turned out, to celebrate the unanimous decision to ask Schatzberg not to retire. Northcross arrived 15 minutes after the meeting started but missed the vote Oct. 10.

“It was a no-brainer,” she said. “We were just thrilled to have finally convinced her that this is a good idea.”

Last week’s meeting had been scheduled to discuss the search process for a successor to Schatzberg, who had announced her plans to retire at the end of this academic year.

“My original reason was that I really felt myself growing weary of the pace and ready for the next chapter,” Schatzberg said in a telephone interview from Maine last week, where she was leading an accreditation team visit to a community college in Bangor. “I thought 10 years was a good round number.”

That was her thinking earlier this year. Then an unrelenting earthquake hit Wall Street.

Administrators and trustees were anticipating a funding upheaval as the state moved to scale back support.

“We are facing some economic challenges and nobody knows better how to navigate that for our college than Kathy, who’s done that before,” said Northcross, the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce’s president and CEO.

“I love this institution,” Schatzberg said. “I have had a great run in this community with this college, and I have great motivation to do everything I can to make it can thrive even in these times>“